Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #723

Advocates of the emerging field of "plant neurobiology" argue that systemic electrical signaling in flora is functionally analogous to animal nervous systems, suggesting that plants possess a rudimentary, previously unrecognized form of intelligence. Mainstream botanists emphatically reject this comparison as anthropomorphic overreach, noting that plants lack cellular structures even remotely resembling neurons, synapses, or a central brain. ________, the empirical observation of complex, long-distance electrical signaling in plants remains a profound botanical discovery, one that requires rigorous scientific explanation entirely devoid of animal-centric metaphors.